Dietro la Mascherina
by g-robber2056
Summary: My idea on the causes of Pavi's scars and face stealing.


_I__wrote this fic months ago, on my calculator while sitting in math class, but I never got around to posting it. This is my idea of what caused Pavi's scaring and face stealing. Text in triple braces ({{{) is a flash-back. I hope you like it, but if you don't I always welcome constructive criticism!_

Pavi slowly came to in a rickety hospital bed.

_What happened?_ he thought, struggling through the Zydrate fog to remember his last conscious moments. Images slowly came to him, dredged up from what felt like dreams – or nightmares. His brother, of course. Who else? What had The Pavi done this time?

It suddenly came to him. After his brother had killed that GENtern, The Pavi had decided to take her face. She was beautiful, after all, somebody had to recognize that.

{{{"You sick β$┬®₫, what are you doing?" Luigi screamed at him. At this point in his life, The Pavi knew better than to hold his ground. Grabbing his knife and the face, he sprinted in the other direction. He thought he was going to get away, too, until the truck had gotten in the way. One of dad's stupid body dump trucks blocked the alley.

Spinning around, Pavi raised his knife as his brother rushed him. Bad idea. _Stupid, Pavi, stupid_, he thought as he remembered the pain of Luigi's fists against his body and the uselessness of his knife. Of course Luigi had gotten the knife out of his hands. Pavi's last memory was of Luigi raising it over and over as pain shot through his body. }}}

Pavi looked down at his uncovered torso, which was wrapped with surgical bandages. Groaning, he leaned back again as a surGEN came into the room.

"Mr. Largo," he stammered. "We were able to fix most of your injuries, but I'm afraid your face..." The surGEN seemed reluctant to continue. "We may be able to replace it, we're been working on new techniques..."

Pavi felt dread wash over him and sat up quickly. He reached up and tore the bandages off of his face as he searched the stand next to him. There was always a mirror by the hospital beds, so that patients could see the results of their surgeries. Pavi stared at himself in horror. Scars covered his face. It looked like his brother had tried to cut his face into ribbons. In many places, so much skin had been cut off that the raw muscle was visible. The surGEN cleared his throat.

"As you can see, the damage was too extensive to repair. I'm sure, though, that we could transplant somebody else's skin onto your face."

Pavi nodded silently. His body was beginning to hurt and he realized how much damage Luigi had caused.

"We'll perform the surgery right away, then," the surGEN seemed relieved that Pavi hadn't tried to kill him yet. A GENtern waltzed into the room with a syringe of Zydrate. Pavi smiled gratefully as she injected him, with his last conscious thought being: _She is beautiful, too._ Within a few seconds, the drug started working and Pavi was out.

Pavi woke in the same hospital bed and sluggishly reached to feel new bandages on his face. He pulled them off with one hand and groped for the mirror with the other. A GENtern came in at his groan of horror.

"I'm-a hideous. It's-a terrible."

The GENtern rushed to get the surGEN.

"Mr. Largo, we won't be able to make you look the way you used to."

Pavi shook his head, eyes still on his reflection.

"This-a is awful. Try again."

The surGEN sighed. So the younger Largo boy was more like his sister than his brother.

"We'll have to wait until we find a new face, Mr. Largo. Until then, I suggest that you stay at home, where you'll be more comfortable." Perhaps living for a while with the face would cause him to like it more. Pavi sighed and nodded, only looking away from the mirror to sign the release forms.

Later, Pavi was sitting on his bed, surveying his collection of faces. The one he had paid so dearly for hadn't been taken with his body to the hospital, and he was sorry to think of it in some pile of human parts. The faces – these girls – were all beautiful, why couldn't he have that beauty?

Pavi picked up the first face, his favorite. He felt the smooth skin beneath his hands, ran his fingertips across the cheeks and lips. He remembered each face's story, but this one stood out sharply in his mind. She had also been the first lover that Luigi had killed. When the angry man had walked from the body, Pavi had snuck towards her...

{{{"I'm-a sorry about-a my brother," he whispered. The girl was already too far gone to understand him; she had lost a lot of blood. The Pavi pushed her hair out of her face. "You're-a beautiful," he paused, taking in the girl's facial features. "You look-a like my mother. She was-a beautiful, too."

The girl stopped breathing, then, leaving him alone with his sorrow. He missed his mom. If only there was some way to capture this beauty, as a tribute.

Something glittering on the ground caught his eye and he picked it up. Luigi's switchblade. The Pavi looked back and forth between the knife and the girl.

_Why not? She won't use it._ Slowly, unsure, he reached over with the blade and cut off the girl's face. Holding the piece of skin in both hands, he dropped the knife and ran off to the warehouse.

Going through the chemicals, it didn't take him long to find a few that would keep the skin from rotting without changing its texture or color. He pulled out a few containers and syringes and began injecting and soaking the skin. Soon, he was sure it would last. He washed and dried the face and ran home and up to his room.

He sat there for hours, holding the face. Finally, he snuck into his sister's dressing room. She had hats lined up on plaster heads, with a dozen or so empty heads grouped in the corner. The Pavi grabbed one and hurried back to his own room.

He carefully placed the face on the head as he heard his father screaming.

"Luigi, Paviche, Carmella, get down here, now!"

The Pavi quickly hid the head in his closet and, with a final glace backwards, ran down the stairs. }}}

Pavi shook himself back to the present, staring at the faces around him. That one had his mother's skin tone, this one had her lips. On and on, he had dozens of faces. After a while he stopped taking them in tribute for his mother, and instead collected in tribute of their beauty.

His wrist-com went off – it was the surGEN.

"Mr. Largo, we have a new face if you want to try the surgery again."

Pavi put down the faces and immediately left for the hospital.

Upon awakening, Pavi found that the second surgery was no better than the first. He urged the surGEN to try again.

Weeks went by, with Pavi getting a new face almost every day. Each looked more hideous than the last to him, and he longed to have the beauty of the faces in his room. Finally, he convinced the surGEN to try a transplant with a female face. His father was not happy.

"You're disgusting," he spat. "You are not worthy of being my son. I am not paying for your surgeries any longer."

Pavi barely cared, his new face was beautiful. He didn't even hear his doctor warn his about the possible effects of too many surgeries so close together. So he was surprised when his new face fell off. He ran back to the hospital.

"I warned you that you might have overdone it. The skin won't hold anymore. We could have tried again, cutting further from the original damage, but since your father won't pay anymore..."

Pavi was horrified. Back at home he locked himself in his room for weeks. He stared at the faces in front of him as his raw face slowly healed. How could he ever look beautiful again? If only there was a way to wear them without surgery.

Suddenly, he had an idea. Grabbing his favorite face, he ran back to the hospital.

The GENtern held the thick staple in her hand and nervously looked from it to Pavi and back. Pavi pushed her slightly, and found that even with his mangled face he could charm the women quickly. With a little more reassurance, the GENtern pushed one end of the staple through the muscles of his face. As she continued with the other five, a second GENtern cut holes in the edge of the face he had brought. Finally, they attached the face by clipping it on with the free ends of the staples.

Pavi looked into a mirror and smiled.

"It's-a perfect." Finally, his face made him happy.


End file.
